


While you were sleeping

by thepurplewombat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, I don't even know why Nat is here, I woke up and this was in my head, John Takes Care Of Sherlock, M/M, That wife, all a bad dream, and apparently Mrs Hudson speaks Russian, and she likes Mrs Hudson, but she's here okay?, i had to write it, mary runs away, more ignore the canon entirely but whatever, of a sort?, parentlock?, season 4 is not real, sherlock is in a coma, should really have been called sleeping beauty, violet Watson takes no shit from teachers, who the hell knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:30:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9980510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: Six months after Sherlock's heart stopped in the sitting room of 221B, John brings him home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Perchance to dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264311) by [thepurplewombat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat). 



> I woke up and this story had popped more or less fully-formed into my head.
> 
> Can be read as a sequel to Perchance to Dream if you like.

Six months after the last time they stood together in 221B, John brings Sherlock home. It’s not at all as he had imagined it. He had thought that he’d help Sherlock up the stairs, Sherlock bitching all the way. He thought Sherlock would lie on the couch and whinge for John to bring him tea and his phone and his laptop, and he would have to stop Sherlock from trying to do too much too soon, and he thought that maybe, finally, someday, they’d have the opportunity to say all the things they’ve never had the guts to say before.

Basically, he thought Sherlock would wake up.

But Sherlock hasn’t woken up, and every day he doesn’t wake up the odds of him ever doing so go down. Sherlock would have been able to tell John by exactly how much those odds fall every day, but Sherlock’s not here so John will just…carry on.

221B looks a bit different now. Mycroft’s people have been through, converting Sherlock’s bedroom into something suitable for the long-term care of coma patients. The bed is new; high enough that John won’t kill his back doing all the million and one things Sherlock will need done, and adjustable. With the alterations comes Miss Natasha, a stunning redhead with the faintest trace of a Russian accent, who will be acting as Sherlock’s carer when – if - John eventually goes back to the clinic. She moves into 221C and immediately charms Mrs Hudson, tells her to call her Nat, and chatters to her in Russian when they think John can’t hear them. Mycroft said she was ‘on loan’ but didn’t say where from, and John doesn’t ask. She moves like Mary did when she thought he wasn’t looking, so he thinks assassin, but she came from Mycroft, so…bodyguard?

Nat teaches John how to do Sherlock’s exercises. He has to be turned every few hours, and his muscles and joints have to be worked. Nat won’t let John do the more personal tasks for Sherlock, and when he argues she asks him if he really thinks Sherlock would want him to see him like this? John gives up, and lets her deal with the intimate details.

Mycroft comes by once a week and John leaves the two of them alone. John doesn’t know what Mycroft talks about to Sherlock, and doesn’t ask, but once as he leaves John can swear he sees the remains of tears on Mycroft’s face. Mummy and Father visit less often, Molly almost every day. Lestrade mainly comes around to bitch at Sherlock to wake up, because the Met’s solve rate is going down the cacky without him. Some nights John comes down and Mrs Hudson is asleep in the chair by Sherlock’s bed, her knitting limp in her hands.

John shaves Sherlock’s face every morning and his head once a week. He doesn’t like the way Sherlock looks naked without his curls, but John can’t keep the curls as clean as Sherlock did, and Sherlock absolutely despised having his hair dirty. He sets a reminder on his phone to have someone come by to do Sherlock’s nails, and phones Sherlock’s favourite place himself. The owner comes herself – owed him a favour, naturally. She doesn’t mention money and neither does John, and she cries as she files and clips and scours and massages and anoints Sherlock’s hands and feet. She leaves behind a bottle of hand lotion that smells like Sherlock, and John uses it when he massages Sherlock’s limbs to keep the blood flowing. She comes back two weeks later without John having phoned, and just like that it’s a routine.

John spends his days by Sherlock’s bedside, reading to him from technical manuals and women’s mags and – occasionally, and maybe in the hope that it will make him wake up if only to tell John to shut up – novels. He reads Austen to Sherlock with a sense of malicious glee, and secretly thinks that Darcy reminds him a bit of someone he knows. He tells Sherlock that, just to be annoying.

***

Three months later, Mycroft shows up at the door with a baby. John’s baby.

“My people tracked Mary down in Mexico,” he says as John stares in awe at the tiny person in his arms. “She’s yours. Had you thought about baby names?”

John blinks at him for a long time before the question really sinks in.

“Is Sherlock really a girl’s name?” he blurts, and Mycroft snorts in laughter. John’s never really seen Mycroft laugh like that before, and it piles another layer of surreality on top of…well, everything. The neatness of the flat, the faint beeping of the heart monitor from the open door to Sherlock’s room. Mycroft, undone enough to laugh.

“No, but Sherlock did once say that if he were a girl, he would want to be called Violet.”

And that’s how Violet Wilhelmina Watson gets her name.

Mycroft’s people arrive with nappies and bottles and clothes and a cot and all the million and one other things that John never thought to need, after Mary disappeared between Baker Street and Bart’s six months ago. Violet is six months old when she comes to Baker Street, with her mother’s big eyes and the Watson nose. Poor tyke.

John sits in his armchair next to Sherlock’s bed to feed her her first bottle, and tells Sherlock what she looks like.

“She’s so beautiful, Sherlock, you can’t even imagine how beautiful she is,” and John’s heart is so full that it spills over from his eyes, tears dripping on Violet’s sleeping face.

***

John thinks that Nat will leave once Mary has been…eliminated, but she doesn’t. When he asks, she looks at him and smiles sadly.

“I’m not ready to go back in the field, Doctor Watson,” she says. “I’m useful here, and it’s where I want to be.”

He doesn’t mention it again, and neither does she.

She urges him to get out of the house, pushes him out of the door with a pram and a shopping list, and John finds himself in Tesco with a baby. He wanders through the shelves and picks up this and that, and manages to get almost everything on the list. After that, he takes Violet on a walk every day.

When he gets back to the flat, he sits next to Sherlock’s bed and tells him about the day, and Violet sits on the bed with a steadying hand behind her and plays with Sherlock’s limp fingers.

***

One night John drinks rather more than he should have, and he finds himself in Sherlock’s room, ranting at him.

“You made a vow,” he snarls into Sherlock’s face. “You swore it. Wake up, _damn you_ , wake up!”

He can’t remember if the speck of brown in Sherlock’s eye was in the right eye or the left, and he falls asleep on his knees beside the bed, still begging for Sherlock to _please, open your eyes, just wake up and I’ll give you anything you want_.

 ***

When Violet is two, she asks John when Sherlock will wake up. They’re sitting in Sherlock’s room again, and Violet has explained to Sherlock about Miss Darling from kindergarten, who had apparently told Violet that Sherlock was nothing like Sleeping Beauty at all. Violet had argued back vigorously, because Sherlock was sleeping, and he was the most beautiful person in the world, so _obviously_ …and there had been a rending of clothes and a throwing of crayons and John had left the clinic early and thrown a rather spectacular wobbly at Miss Darling, who was suitably apologetic.

“I don’t know, my darling,” John says. “Uncle Mycroft says that Sherlock may be…working something out inside his head.”

“You mean like when Miss Natasha is making tea and doesn’t hear the kettle boil and says she was just thinking?”

“Yes, but because Sherlock is so much smarter than everyone else, he can think much bigger thoughts than you and me. And that’s why he’s taking so long to wake up.”

Violet turns awed eyes on Sherlock, who has been her secret confidante and favourite toy combined for most of her short life.

“That sounds like a really big thought, Daddy,” she says, and John laughs.

“Yes, yes it does,” he says. “And now, do we want storytime here or in bed?”

Violet insists on having storytime while she’s sitting on Sherlock’s bed, and by the time the mouse has scared off the Gruffalo, she is fast asleep, curled into Sherlock’s side where she can’t interfere with the heart monitor’s leads or anything else. John lifts up the bed’s railings and puts her favourite blanket over her, and goes to sleep in the sitting room.

***

When Violet is three, Nat begins to teach her how to play the violin. She's a gifted student, and soon she is playing simple tunes on her tiny violin, and John tries not to look at Sherlock's Strad and cry. Maybe one day, if...well. If. Maybe one day Violet will play the Strad. In the meantime, Nat keeps it tuned, keeps it alive, because apparently violins die if they're not played. John has earplugs for when Nat is playing, because she sounds like Sherlock, sometimes, enough to wonder if they'd had the same teacher once.

***

On Violet’s fourth birthday, she blows out her candles and wishes for Sherlock to wake up.

***

Three weeks after Violet’s birthday, John is doing a bit of reading in the living room. Violet is sitting at Sherlock’s feet on the bed, playing with his toes. Nat says it’s probably good for him, and Violet likes to do it while she’s telling Sherlock all about her day, and her friends. Sometimes John thinks she talks to Sherlock more than she talks to him.

Violet’s sudden scream sends a bolt of terror through him, and he’s on his feet and into the room before recognizing that her scream was one of joy, not fear.

“Daddy, daddy _look!”_ she says. “Sherlock’s awake!”

Sherlock frowns at her, and for a moment John is terrified that he won’t know who she is – he should have thought of this, shouldn’t have let her get attached, shouldn’t-

“Violet,” Sherlock says, and his voice is a hoarse ruin that send John hurtling to the icemaker on Sherlock’s bedside. “Don’t _shout_ so, darling.”

And Sherlock is weak, and still slightly confused, but his eyes are open and he’s smiling at John and Violet like they’re the most welcome thing he’s ever seen, and John is unabashedly crying as he slips a sliver of ice into Sherlock’s mouth.

“I love you,” he says, and kisses Sherlock’s forehead, and Sherlock doesn’t move, but every line in his body expresses his yearning, so John kisses him on the mouth while Violet claps her hands delightedly, and when he pulls away Sherlock smiles at him.

“I know,” Sherlock says.

***

In later years, Violet will tell the story of how Daddy John woke Papa Sherlock with a kiss, and neither of them will correct her.

 

 


End file.
